Sister
by anillusionthatcantend
Summary: Your name is Dave Strider and you can't bear to see your sister like this.


Your name is Dave Strider, and you can't bear to see Rose like this.

That bold, snarky, elegant, genius girl you once knew, who you were proud to call your sister, whether ectobiologically or not... she's still there, you know it, but she's hiding behind the thick scent of alcohol. You miss her, with her little obscurities and calm demeanor. Now she's just... a girl, a shell of false happiness, fueled by alcohol... and absolutely nothing like the girl you once knew... drowning in alcohol, conked out in a dark room to sit and wallow.

You grit your teeth as you lean down to examine her prone body, the only thing you can tell she's still even alive is the slight rise and fall of her chest. Her body is flopped on its' side, and it seems she's been completely out of it for hours, just sitting in the dark room.

You bite your lip, wondering if something happened with Maryam, because you know Maryam, and she wouldn't have left her - or at least, without cleaning up the mess Rose has made. Her breathing falls into a soft, calm rhythm. Her face is surprisingly peaceful.

"Jegus Christ Lalonde, you could have a little more tact." you murmur, but it's more to yourself, since she's completely smashed and out cold, snoring away your days on this godforsaken piece of space junk to the new session. You're so close, yet it feels so far.

Her face is pale, except for the flush of alcohol flowering over her cheeks. Her face is sunken in and gaunt, she's kind of like a drowned rat. She's wasted away, her robes draping on her skeletal figure - only cloying to her with her sweat. Her breath smells of alcohol, a trail of liquid dribbling down her chin, her stygian lipstick smeared so it's like an oil spill has just occurred on her chin. You can tell she's been crying, her makeup is shakily applied - and it's been running.

It's haunting, since you never seem to see her cry... even when you died together in the crypts of Derse. Her eyes were misty, and disturbingly calm while you were inwardly bawling... and even in her drunken stupor. That's the Lalonde constant, drunken or not, to hide behind that mask. It seems like she's hit her high and ridden the after-effects roller coaster with a sharp drop down.

You don't want to disturb her so you gently prod her, before it becomes very evident that she's not going to be waking up any time soon. You don't want her to fall into the huge pile of sick, and she probably won't wake up happy and spend the rest of the day complaining. She needs to get proper rest.

Before you realize what you're doing, you scoop her into your arms, kind of carrying her bridal style. She's light, not surprisingly, she's been reduced to a skeleton. Her steady rhythm within your arms is almost comforting, and you know that Rose Lalonde is still in there. Has she even been eaten anything? You just consider it lucky that death by starvation is neither heroic or just.

You sigh with disdain as you begin your journey to her bedroom. "What would Bro say?" You know he would very well beat your ass, if he caught you drinking or something, not that you ever would have. It wasn't cool. "What would our Mom say?" You shake your head slowly, walking through the ominously dark corridors, so quiet you could hear a horn honking from across the meteor.

You bite your lip at that thought., and quickly dismiss it.

Finally, you reach her bedroom. It seems Maryam isn't inhabiting it at the moment, so it looks like you'll have to take matters into your own hands. You let her down onto the bed, hoping to ironically tuck her in like those picture-perfect family movies where everything is just sugary sweet, and it's not like you're her ecto-sibling that literally met face to face about 2 years ago.

The corners of your mouth quirk up, seeing her so unguarded - even when she's drunk, she always carries around that mask. But this isn't the Lalonde you know. She seems so small and childlike, all curled up. _She's really just a big child. _But you're not really one to talk. You're only older than her by a day, and you still need sick beats to serenade you to sleep.

You sit down beside her for a little while, tugging the covers as gently as you can over her and letting it drape over her tiny figure.

You're upset. You're upset that this strong girl is reduced to a clambering drunk who needs help just to get to bed. _Just like our Mom._ But upset doesn't cover it. You're disappointed.

And a little misty eyed. But cool kids don't cry.

That drunk girl... is your sister. And you feel horrible for thinking she shouldn't be.

Because you miss Rose Lalonde, that strong, obscure, eloquent young woman, her genius, your heated fights over your irony and undeniable coolness conflicting with her icy magniloquent garrulousness. You miss her a lot.

Your eyes run over the lines on her forehead. You haven't _really_ kept track of time, ironically, because you're a time player, and at one point, that was your whole life, your whole being. But the meaning was lost for you, you've done an awful lot of jumping around from timeline to timeline. There's no way of knowing the real time, sweeps or years - because you're the only one who keeps track - on this goddamned rock. But you don't trust yourself, time is different for you than it is other people, timestreams just filters into each other, and comes down to a melting pot. You're losing your mind, too. You're probably like 1000 by all the time traveling you've done in a little pocket dimension where you age differently than others. Because really, time doesn't exist. Clocks exist.

But it has to exist, because it's obviously taken a toll on Rose. She's 15, almost 16. Too old for those types of wrinkles to imprint themselves on her face, and grey hairs to be growing in. _But this whole damned game has taken a toll on everyone on this meteor. _you think to yourself, but Rose has taken a whole blunt of it, planning all of it, putting the pieces together, ripping it together to get to the truth, the real goal, and if it weren't for her, your session would never have succeeded, and you'd probably be dead.

You just want that Rose back, but you're worried, that she's gone.

And watching those lines tense as she dreams, probably chilling with those weird pre-scratch trolls, with Prospit and Derse void - but you only hope that her mind isn't too muddled that she reaches out to the horrorterrors again instead, or even just dreams the blackest dreams.

At first her drunken spells were hilarious. Then it just got worse.

And those lines are a testament to that. Her 2007 Lindsay Lohan look will take the stand and testify for her.

You brush away a strand of her platinum hair, and let it fall to the side of her face. You feel like a huge pussy right now, and this behaviour is not cool at all - but you don't really care. You know this is going to get old fast. You get up from the bed, not knowing where you're going, probably aimlessly wandering.

"Daev." Her voice, no matter how rustic, broken and choppy - startles you a bit. "P-pleadsun't leave me." _Please don't leave me. _You stop in your tracks, listening to her slurred words. Her voice cracked a bit, and she sounds very desperate, just a little less desperate than when you died with her... in every lifetime. You know that it's the alcohol acting on her mood. You remember when she used to complain about her mother would be pathetically sobbing in her room about how they all left her. It's easy to draw a parallel.

You glance back at her. She's an foreboding image, her sallow face in a tangle of washed out greasy hair, rising up from the bed. She can't meet your eyes, but you feel as if her lilac eyes are trying to bore a hole into your cape, and even in the darkness, you can see her eyes are wet, and she's really struggling to hold it together.

You can remember a timeline, where you had to leave her in the darkness, where she would cease to exist after John and Jade died, and you had to reset the timeline... But you would keep your promise this time. "Never again." You shake your head. "God, you're completely fucking smashed."

"Ah, I'm fele your ever so ubitiquous - " Hiccup. "Compassion." Her sarcastic words almost resonate through your mind, as she wipes her tears on her Seer robes impertinently. It's good to know that she still has her wit, even if she mispronounced ubiquitous. Her mouth pulls into a sardonic grin, a grim image with her makeup running as if she's the fucking Grudge. "Hava drik." She coughs. "Drink."

"I'm fine. I'd rather not try your bootleg Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone moonshine. You better lay off that crazy shit, Rose Lalonde." Your voice is soft, trying hard not to wear thin.

She looks taken aback, her lavender eyes piercing through you. "Ooooookay, Daev, just don't let out your evident melachnoly on your cape. Look at it, it's so ssafd, all like woop, Daev Stdider cries into me every ngight about he misses his - " Her voice is still bold, but it doesn't carry that grim, poised grandiose that told you she thought she was better than you.

"Go to sleep Rose. You're saying stupid shit."

"Yeah, it's becasue you're such a dirk." She frowns a bit. "Dick, I mean. It's because you're worried, rgight, that I'm gunna end up liek Mom. In theory, I probabably will be, perpletuated by the guise that I won't be insthigated. She'd probababably be fucking ecstatic - we can finally relate." She laughs despondently. "You're gonna levae me... aren't you?" Hic. "Ha, there's no needa ta woirry; I can hadnel myself and am fully crapable."

"Good night, Rose. Just go to sleep." _You keep telling yourself that._

She smiles thinly, her cheeks sunken in and sallow, and glances off to the side. "Good night, Dave. And... and... thanks."

You're going to help her. You're going to try. You're going to try and get that Rose Lalonde back. Brave, smart, elegant Rose Lalonde, who you miss and who you've been through with so much, not this hollow who is drunken off her ass, following in her mom's footsteps of a lonely single mom, who fills all of her days with alcohol, who you're so afraid to call your sister still. Rose Lalonde, who you can't bear to see like this. This Rose Lalonde that's lost the light within her.

You're trying really hard to stay patient and kind as you can be for this poor girl, but she's hammered.

But right now, despite Rose being so difficult; despite Rose not being the Rose you imagined with her verbose speech over the internet so many years ago; despite Rose not being the Rose that Maryam fell in love with; despite Rose not being the strong girl she was a couple years ago... she's your sister and she is still Rose Lalonde, one of the greatest and most impossible girls you have ever met.

Your name is Dave Strider and you miss your brave, smart, elegant Rose Lalonde.

_so by the time_

_the bar closes_

_and you feel like falling down_

_i'll carry_

_you home_

_tonight_


End file.
